Yesterday was the Insecure Writer's Support Group. Most of the time it's not very interesting, but I did find the question for September to be fairly interesting:
If you could have one author, living or dead, be your beta reader, who would it be?
From reading Michael Offutt and Tony Laplume's responses, I don't think they really gave this question enough consideration. Mostly they seemed to just pick someone they liked: Guillermo del Toro and Roberto Bolano respectively.
The thing is, a beta reader is like a mentor, someone more experienced than you who's going to help you improve your writing. If I simply pick based on my favorite author, I'd pick John Irving of course. You know that if you've read this blog or previous ones for a while.
But would I really want him as my mentor? I don't think so. Mostly because I think he'd probably be kind of a jerk. And I'm kind of a jerk, so two jerks trying to work together wouldn't work very well.
I don't know some of my other favorite authors well enough to know how well I might get along with them. Other famous authors have their own problems, like Faulkner and Chandler (and many others) had problems with alcohol. Others had problems with drugs and so on.
Let's say I go with another of my favorites: Lawrence Block. The first problem is that right now he's like 85. But since I can pick anyone, anytime, maybe I can use my Bill & Ted phone booth to go back and scoop him up from another time. I'd have to do some research though because at one time I think he had a problem with alcohol and at another (or the same time) had marital troubles, so I wouldn't want to scoop him up from those times.
Anyway, it sounds like a simple question, but maybe all the people not reading this can see how complicated it is. To find your beta reader, your Jedi Master, you need to think about more than just someone whose work you like. You have to consider them as a person and how they might form a decent partnership with you.
Maybe I'm just overthinking a frivolous question. Or not.
5 comments:
Pretty sure I said that I would love to write more like him (in some respects). The guy was an encyclopedia of literature. I said all that.
This is a good question, but the only authors I can think of are dead. I guess I need that phone booth.
The point is you have no idea how well you'd be able to work with him. Given your track record, I'd say poorly.
Of working with someone? My continuing question is, what is your basis? The fact that you personally sometimes have nasty things to say?
I calls 'em as I sees 'em.
Post a Comment